Quotes about air

A collection of quotes on the topic of air, likeness, use, doing.

Quotes about air

Niall Horan photo

“I'd rather be called a boy and play with paper air-planes than be called a man and play with a girl's heart.”

Niall Horan (1993) Irish singer and songwriter

Dare to Dream by One Direction, https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/6422638.Niall_Horan

Tupac Shakur photo
Walt Whitman photo
David Attenborough photo
Amit Ray photo

“Open the window of your mind. Allow the fresh air, new lights and new truths to enter.”

Amit Ray (1960) Indian author

Walking the Path of Compassion (2015)

Vladimir Putin photo

“We will find them anywhere on the planet and punish them. Our Air Force’s military work in Syria must not simply be continued. It must be intensified in such a way that the criminals understand that vengeance is inevitable.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

2015-11-17, vowing to retaliate against the Islamic militants responsible for the destruction of a Russian airliner over the Sinai on October 31, 2015. Tribune India, http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/nation/russians-up-strikes-in-french-fury/159736.html (17 November 2015)
2011 - 2015

Tupac Shakur photo
Thich Nhat Hanh photo
The Notorious B.I.G. photo

“I love it when you call me Big Poppa; throw your hands in the air if you's a true player.”

The Notorious B.I.G. (1972–1997) American rapper

Song lyrics, Ready to Die (1994), "Big Poppa"

Jacque Fresco photo
Jacques-Yves Cousteau photo

“Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.”

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and …
George Orwell photo
Nikki Sixx photo
Karen Blixen photo
Leonard Bernstein photo
Henry Rollins photo
Morgan Freeman photo

“We have 7 billion people on this planet. It’s not that there’s not enough room on this planet for 7 billion people, it’s that the energy needs for 7 billion people are 7 billion people’s worth of energy needs, as opposed to, say, 2 billion. Imagine how much pollution would be in the air and the oceans if there were only 2 billion people putting it in? So yeah, we’re already overpopulated.”

Morgan Freeman (1937) American actor, film director, and narrator

Source: [Stern, Marlow, Janbuary 28, 2014, Morgan Freeman on God, Satan, and How the Human Race Has ‘Become A Parasite’, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/morgan-freeman-kerry-washington-celebrate-oscars-science-at-breakthrough-prize-ceremony-1064160, The Daily Beast, New York, December 4, 2017]

Yoko Ono photo
Sylvia Plath photo
George Orwell photo
Louisa May Alcott photo

“Human minds are more full of mysteries than any written book and more changeable than the cloud shapes in the air.”

Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888) American novelist

Source: The Abbot's Ghost: A Christmas Story

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Emily Brontë photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Karl Lagerfeld photo
Stephen Fry photo
Emily Dickinson photo
Dante Alighieri photo
Paracelsus photo

“All is interrelated. Heaven and earth, air and water. All are but one thing; not four, not two and not three, but one. Where they are not together, there is only an incomplete piece.”

Paracelsus (1493–1541) Swiss physician and alchemist

Paracelsus - Collected Writings Vol. I (1926) edited by Bernhard Aschner, p. 110

Dante Alighieri photo
José Rizal photo

“Genius has no country. It blossoms everywhere. Genius is like the light, the air. It is the heritage of all.”

José Rizal (1861–1896) Filipino writer, ophthalmologist, polyglot and nationalist

Toast to the artists Juan Luna and Felix Hidalgo: Madrid, Spain (25 June 1884)

Thomas Gray photo
Elizabeth I of England photo
George Orwell photo

“How sweet the air does smell — even the air of a back-street in the suburbs — after the shut-in, subfaecal stench of the spike!”

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 27, on the morning after Orwell is let out of his first tramps' accommodation, or 'spike'.

Socrates photo
Rajneesh photo
Dante Alighieri photo
Vladimir Tatlin photo

“The dream [of flying] is as old as Icarus... I too want to give back to man the feeling of flight [with his 'Letatlin'-air-bike, 1929-1932]. This we have been robbed of by the mechanical flight of the aeroplane. We cannot feel the movement of our body in the air.”

Vladimir Tatlin (1885–1953) Russian artist

quote, c. 1930; https://utopiadystopiawwi.wordpress.com/constructivism/vladimir-tatlin/letalin/ cited by Christina Lodder, in Russian Constructivism; Yale University Press, Connecticut, 1983, p. 213
The 'Letatlin' was a glider, what Tatlin called an 'air bike', since it would be manually pedaled by the user and contain no motor
Quotes, 1926 - 1954

Black Elk photo
Dante Alighieri photo

“Day was departing, and the embrowned air
Released the animals that are on earth
From their fatigues.”

Canto II, lines 1–3 (tr. Longfellow)
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

John Trudell photo
George Orwell photo
Empedocles photo

“I shall speak twice over. As upon a time One came to be alone out of many, so at another time it divided to be many out of One: fire and water and earth and the limitless vault of air, and wretched Strife apart from these, in equal measure to everything, and Love among them, equal in length and breadth.”

from fr. 17
Variant translations:
But come! but hear my words! For knowledge gained/Makes strong thy soul. For as before I spake/Naming the utter goal of these my words/I will report a twofold truth. Now grows/The One from Many into being, now/Even from one disparting come the Many--/Fire, Water, Earth, and awful heights of Air;/And shut from them apart, the deadly Strife/In equipoise, and Love within their midst/In all her being in length and breadth the same/Behold her now with mind, and sit not there/With eyes astonished, for 'tis she inborn/Abides established in the limbs of men/Through her they cherish thoughts of love, through her/Perfect the works of concord, calling her/By name Delight, or Aphrodite clear.
tr. William E. Leonard
On Nature
Context: But come, hear my words, since indeed learning improves the spirit. Now as I said before, setting out the bounds of my words, I shall speak twice over. As upon a time One came to be alone out of many, so at another time it divided to be many out of One: fire and water and earth and the limitless vault of air, and wretched Strife apart from these, in equal measure to everything, and Love among them, equal in length and breadth. Consider [Love] in mind, you, and don't sit there with eyes glazing over. It is a thing considered inborn in mortals, to their very bones; through it they form affections and accomplish peaceful acts, calling it Joy or Aphrodite by name.

Raymond Chandler photo

“What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now.”

Source: The Big Sleep (1939), Chapter 32, Phillip Marlowe
Context: What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell. Me, I was part of the nastiness now. Far more a part of it than Rusty Regan was. But the old man didn't have to be. He could lie quiet in his canopied bed, with his bloodless hands folded on the sheet, waiting. His heart was a brief, uncertain murmur. His thoughts were as gray as ashes. And in a little while he too, like Rusty Regan, would be sleeping the big sleep.

Galileo Galilei photo

“This bounded terminal speed will be called the maximum that such a heavy body can naturally attain through the air”

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) Italian mathematician, physicist, philosopher and astronomer

Salviati, Day Four, 278-279 Stillman Drake translation (1974)
Dialogues and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences (1638)
Context: The speed of the ball—thanks to opposition from the air—will not go on increasing forever. Rather, what will happen is seen in bodies of very little weight falling through no great distance; I mean, a reduction to equable motion, which will occur also in a lead or iron ball after the descent of some thousands of braccia. This bounded terminal speed will be called the maximum that such a heavy body can naturally attain through the air...

Mikhail Bakunin photo

“Oh, the air is sultry and pregnant with lightning.
And therefore we call to our deluded brothers: Repent, repent, the Kingdom of the Lord is at hand!”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

"The Reaction in Germany" (1842)
Context: Everywhere, especially in France and England, social and religious societies are being formed which are wholly alien to the world of present-day politics, societies that derive their life from new sources quite unknown to us and that grow and diffuse themselves without fanfare. The people, the poor class, which without doubt constitutes the greatest part of humanity; the class whose rights have already been recognized in theory but which is nevertheless still despised for its birth, for its ties with poverty and ignorance, as well as indeed with actual slavery – this class, which constitutes the true people, is everywhere assuming a threatening attitude and is beginning to count the ranks of its enemy, far weaker in numbers than itself, and to demand the actualization of the right already conceded to it by everyone. All people and all men are filled with a kind of premonition, and everyone whose vital organs are not paralyzed faces with shuddering expectation the approaching future which will utter the redeeming word. Even in Russia, the boundless snow-covered kingdom so little known, and which perhaps also has a great future in store, even in Russia dark clouds are gathering, heralding storm. Oh, the air is sultry and pregnant with lightning.
And therefore we call to our deluded brothers: Repent, repent, the Kingdom of the Lord is at hand!

Thiago Silva photo

“He is very strong at defending, both on the ground and in the air. He is a complete player and has no faults. He is a modern defender because he is as strong defensively as many others, but has something more than the rest. When he has the ball, he knows what to do.”

Thiago Silva (1984) Brazilian footballer

Carlo Ancelotti (PSG), 2013 http://www.sambafoot.com/en/news/45256_psg_coach_carlo_ancelotti__thiago_silva_is_best_defender_in_the_world.html
From coaches and club directors

Francis of Assisi photo
George Orwell photo
Benjamin Disraeli photo
Sylvia Plath photo

“Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
and I eat men like air.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

"Lady Lazarus"
Ariel (1965)
Variant: p>Herr God, Herr Lucifer,
Beware.
Beware.Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.</p
Source: Ariel: The Restored Edition

Franz Kafka photo
Julio Cortázar photo
Eckhart Tolle photo
Frank Zappa photo

“A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

Source: The Real Frank Zappa Book (1989), p. 162.

Terry Pratchett photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Sadhguru photo
William Shakespeare photo
Sylvia Plath photo
Oscar Wilde photo
William Shakespeare photo

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair, hover through fog and filthy air.”

Variant: Fair is foul, and foul is fair.
Source: Macbeth

Yukio Mishima photo
Sylvia Plath photo
Michael Connelly photo
Mark Nepo photo
Jonathan Safran Foer photo
John Quincy Adams photo

“Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air.”

John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) American politician, 6th president of the United States (in office from 1825 to 1829)

In recent years this has often been misquoted as: "Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish".
Oration at Plymouth (1802)
Context: Courage and perseverance have a magical talisman, before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish into air. These qualities have ever been displayed in their mightiest perfection, as attendants in the retinue of strong passions.

Louisa May Alcott photo
David Icke photo
Virginia Woolf photo
Laurie Halse Anderson photo
Helen Dunmore photo
Alicia Keys photo
Ambrose Bierce photo
William Shakespeare photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Diana Gabaldon photo
Barry Lyga photo
Rainer Maria Rilke photo
Jane Austen photo
John Lennon photo
Laura Ingalls Wilder photo

“Some old-fashioned things like fresh air and sunshine are hard to beat. In our mad rush for progress and modern improvements let's be sure we take along with us all the old-fashioned things worth while.”

Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867–1957) American children's writer, diarist, and journalist

Source: A Family Collection: Life on the Farm and in the Country, Making a Home; the Ways of the World, a Woman's Role

Ludwig Wittgenstein photo
William Shakespeare photo
Sylvia Plath photo
Mark Twain photo
Jonathan Safran Foer photo
Jean Paul Sartre photo
Bertrand Russell photo
Pablo Neruda photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo